


and this hand we hold

by Hazazel



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Kyoutani as a half fae, M/M, Shigeru as a witch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 10:33:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18259499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazazel/pseuds/Hazazel
Summary: Balancing school and magic is hard for Shigeru, and it's even harder when his mother starts pressuring him to find a boyfriend. When he strikes an unlikely fake relationship with his sworn enemy Shirabu, things seem to get a little simpler - luckily, Kyoutani is there to make them more complicated





	and this hand we hold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lostlenore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostlenore/gifts).



> hi !!!!! i hope you all like it but especially you lostenlore

Shigeru is going to fucking lose it. He’s has enough, really, that’s his limit. He can’t let that slide.

“Kyoutani. I get it, you hate me. But stealing my snacks after every single practice ? This has to stop. My water bottles can be refilled, my strawberry KitKat can’t.”

“You can always buy more,” Kyoutani says around a mouthful of chocolate bar. He doesn’t sound bothered in the least by Shigeru’s fury, which isn’t surprising. It’s because he knows Shigeru won’t do anything, like every time he complains about Shinji stealing from his bento or Kunimi dozing off during practice. He really should work on everyday authority. Maybe the fact that Kyoutani has started showing up at Magic Monday Meetups plays a part in it though – seeing Shigeru with his mum has a certain tendency to make people take him less seriously.

When he comes home from practice though, the very same mother snaps him out of his worries like they never existed, only to replace them with more pressing matters. She’s mixing some kind of paste in the mortar, most likely with rose, if the smell is anything to judge by.

“Shigeru, my son !” she says when he enters.

“Mum. What’s happening ?” This doesn’t bode well. She never calls him “my son”, that’s his dad’s thing, so this must have something to do with…

“Have you read the magazine I left on your nightstand ?” she says, looking at him expectantly.

“No, mum, I haven’t, and you know I won’t,” Shigeru moans. “ _10 tips for dating when you’re gay_ , really ?”

“I figured it could help ! You’re almost 18, Shigeru, and you haven’t had a single date. I just want my little boy to find the love of his life, is that too much to ask ?” she says, waving her pestle woefully.

That’s it. She’s saying that again, like Shigeru believes in love or stuff like that, like he needs an other half to be complete or else he’ll die of old age, alone, at 22.

“Mom. Please. I’ll just… I don’t feel like it, ok ? Who would I even date ?” he says tiredly. They’ve been over this a dozen times since he came out. “I don’t know any gay boys.”

“That’s true,” she says, and her face falls a little. She’s just afraid he’ll end up lonely, being an only child with no cousins, and he doesn’t know how to tell her he’s got all his life ahead of him, and little to no interest in romance anyway. Right now what matters is volleyball, and getting to nationals while crushing Karasuno and Shiratorizawa. With the third years gone (no, he’s the third year now, but. Ugh) and him being appointed captain, it falls on his shoulders to lead the team to victory. They’ve got some promising first years, Kyoutani has never been so invested in practicing, and there’s a training camp with their sworn enemies coming soon that’ll hopefully give them some much needed competitive spirit.

All seems to be going fine and he doesn’t know why he’d need a date anyway.

His mum finally relents and lets him go to his room to do his homework, but not without a worry-filled glance that sends chills down Shigeru’s back – like his life sentence has been pronounced and he’s on death row for the miserable crime of being single.

The magazine lays on his nightstand for a few days before his mum gives up and throws it out, but it fills him with an uneasy feeling that he’s missing something.

The training camp can’t come any sooner.

 

 

Shigeru can’t believe what he’s doing. He is sitting down and doing what looks like a ripoff of Sabrina the teenage witch’s spell over a volleyball, all this because a fucking yokai decided to live in it. The beast is small and unassuming, and leaves off scampering as soon as he’s finished, which is a relief.

Raising his head and meeting eyes with Shirabu isn’t.

“What the hell,” they both say at the same time, which makes Shirabu look even more spooked. “No,” Shirabu says quickly after, “I don’t even wanna know.” Then he seems to think back on what just happened, and adds, “I’ll definitely tell the others though.”

“Fuck you,” Shigeru answers, a twinge of panic beneath his anger. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“Magic is banned for a reason,” Shirabu wisely recites, like this somehow is supposed to mean something.

Shigeru knows his whole family’s trade is illegal but they’re damn good at what they do and someone has to take care of the fair folk’s bastard children anyway. Shirabu seems to think about it a few seconds more, and then…

“I won’t tell,” he says. “ _If_ you do something for me.”

“I absolutely refuse to lose,” Shigeru immediately warns, not that he thinks Shirabu would ask for an easy victory, but he just has to make sure. Shirabu looks down, then bores his eyes in Shigeru’s skull like he can gouge his brains out with just a glance.

“You’re disgusting. Date me.”

That’s surprising. For more reasons than one. “Aren’t you in love with Ushijima ?” he asks, too bewildered to say what’s really on his mind (“Don’t you hate me ?”).

Shirabu sighs, drags a hand down his face, sighs again, and sits down next to Shigeru and his volleyball. “No, fucking hell, who talked to you about this ?”

“Everyone knows, Shirabu, we all assumed you were dating at some point.”

“Erm, what the fuck, he’s dating Tendou,” Shirabu says with the a slight tightness to his voice that Shigeru can’t help but hear, both their eyes downcast.

That doesn’t mean you can’t date Ushijima – or both of them, Shirabu thinks, but maybe Shirabu is not into that sort of thing, so instead he answers, “Can I tell my mum ? She’ll finally leave me alone.”

“Whatever. I’ll tell my sister and win ten thousand yen.”

“You’re dating me for a stupid bet and for money,” Shigeru plainly states. Then he bursts out laughing, elbowing Shirabu when he scoffs. “I can’t believe I’m gathering funds for the enemy.”

“The ‘enemy’, what are you, twelve ?” Shirabu answers. “We’re just rival teams. Enjoying a training camp together. Two captains are going to smooch at some point because they’re fake dating.”

The captains are going to what ?

When Shigeru envisions his first kiss, he can only come up with a blank page. Boys certainly are appealing to look at and he has one or two “alone time” fantasies, but kissing… that’s intimate. Too much to imagine doing it with someone he isn’t extremely close to, and he can’t imagine ever getting this close to anyone. He’s not a romantic, sue him.

“You wanna make this public ? How long do you intend to use me for anyway ?” Shigeru wonders if they’ll be stuck like this for months. If they’ll have to message every day. If they’ll fake outings, so they’ll be seen together doing couple-y stuff. Gross, he thinks.

“You’re right,” Shirabu amends. “I mean. I’m not opposed to getting dirty. Might as well make the most of it and you’re pretty decent looking. But yeah. Discreet fake-sucking is probably best suited for the occasion, if face-sucking there ever is.”

He can’t help but notice that Shirabu went from saying “smooch” to “face-sucking” when faced with rejection, which confirms in Shigeru’s mind that there’s something more to his offer than what he can gather (for now).

“Hey, you know what,” Shigeru says, elbowing him more gently this time. “If we don’t kill each other in the time it takes for the camp to be over, we’ll deserve a victory kiss.”

Shirabu smiles, a little more truthful than what he felt like to Shigeru than before, and elbows him back.

 

 

Kentarou isn’t the best at this. Staying quiet, listening, sitting down… It would just turn out that he’s a dogling. Probably the worst there is out there.

No, Minato-san says he shouldn’t think like that. Minato-san is the one who talked him into trying volleyball again, into showing up at Magic Monday Meetups, into daring to look at boys and come out to his mother.

It all went well, which doesn’t mean he isn’t on edge. For once, there’s the fact that everything could crumble. Then there’s Watari, who is either in the know thanks to that stool pigeon Yahaba or disgustingly perceptive, and who must be the one who keeps slipping dog treats in his bag. Kentarou definitely doesn’t enjoy that, as food or as a token of friendship, no, not at all.

And then there’s fucking. Fucking Yahaba.

If Kentarou could get stranded on an island with only one person, he’d pick him, because he’d feel so on edge he’d do anything in his power to go back to civilisation, where thankfully, Yahaba can be avoided save for class and volleyball practice. Minato-san says there’s something to look at here, but Kentarou would like to disagree. There’s nothing to look at and it definitely doesn’t make heat curl low in his belly when he thinks of Yahaba late at night, curled up in his pen.

Sometimes Kentarou wonders what the others on the team would say if they learned he’s a dogling. Magic is banned but the fair folk’s children are well taken care of, government-wise, and there’s always a good excuse to make fae-antagonism look like something more human-passing. His own father is a good example. The man means well, but the fact that this training camp is the first time Kentarou has slept in a proper bed since he last fled his house for Minato-san’s says something he also doesn’t want to look at too close.

But still, being part dog has its perks, like… super senses, if you wanna call it that. Which allows Kentarou to be privy to all the gossip he wished he’d never hear, like a first year’s excited whisper to his friends that Shirabu and Yahaba were seen kissing behind the Shiratorizawa bus.

Yahaba doesn’t appear for several more minutes, which tends to confirm this theory, and he also smells suspiciously of sweat for someone who doesn’t seem to have been running (he also smells like skin and shampoo. Make of that what you will). Kentarou doesn’t say anything and sits at his usual place, in the back row, looking straight at the window for the entire duration of the trip.

 

 

Shirabu is suspiciously soft smelling, and the thought haunts Shigeru for the whole trip back home. It would just turn out that Kyoutani walks very briskly past him on the way to the bus, which reminds him that, oh, super smell, Kyoutani can probably tell what Shigeru’s been up to.

For some reason, he cares.

When he enters his home, Shigeru is immediately crowded on the counter by his mother, who doesn’t say anything – just looks at him with that all-knowing look he hates.

“What, mum, you’re creepy !” he eventually says, but she just tut-tuts and walks away.

This is all her doing, isn’t it.

Shigeru’s family is, if you will, like the local drug dealers. They sell love potions, they do tarot readings, they rid you of the yokai living in your shoe. It doesn’t meant they’re… special, or anything like that. Like a drug dealer isn’t special for selling you weed, he didn’t make it at home anyway. All they do is borrow from the fae, who owe it to them, with how consistently they end up leaving their halflings here.

It does mean they go to Magic Monday Meetups, though, which is the local witchy reunion masquerading as a tourist trap. Shigeru does his part of the job, which is taking the clients in, and Kyoutani, who has become a regular for the past few weeks, does his, which is growl at anyone looking too closely at the back door. Or at least, Shigeru assumes that’s Kyoutani, because the dog has the same ridiculous markings down the sides of his back. This is the reason Shigeru feels forced to say to the dog, “You could be nicer to kids,” after a particularly nasty growl towards a little girl.

The dog looks at him like he’s sprouted a second head, and he scoffs.

“Fine, don’t come whine at school when you’re kicked out for making us lose clients then.”

“Stop harassing the dog,” Minato-san says as he walks to the back door. He bends down to pet Kyoutani’s head and the dog doesn’t bite him or anything, which must be thanks to one of Minato-san’s special powers.

Life goes on. His mother sends him cryptic text messages whenever she feels like Shigeru might be able to lend a date, which in turn allows him to give shitty excuses such as “My mum texted” whenever Shirabu starts getting handsy. Which is fairly often. They’re actually seeing each other, to Shigeru’s endless bewilderment, and things… aren’t working too bad.

Apart from the fact that he’s scared shitless of doing something and then regretting it, but, you know, #JustTeenagerThings.

 

 

Kentarou doesn’t know what that entails exactly, but Watari is staging “An Intervention, yes, Kyoutani, the capital letters are intentional”. Truth be told, Yahaba _has_ been acting a little strange. According to Minato-san, he’s started talking to Kentarou’s dog, and he’s been especially shy in terms of physical interactions, which never seemed to be an issue before. He’s stopped stealing Kentarou’s food back and shoving him past the stairs when they go to practice.

So, yeah, while in theory he _gets_ the whole point of this intervention… He doesn’t understand what he himself has to do with the whole thing.

They’re not friends, are they ? They hardly speak. (Not that he. Particularly resents that. Maybe a little but. Not that way though, they aren’t friends.) And their interactions have been somewhat limited by Kentarou’s inability to do much more than politely growl when irked, which Yahaba seems to willingly provoke. So, dead end.

Watari makes a soft “oh” sound when he tells them that, and then says the most ridiculous sentence ever.

“But… aren’t you loyal to him now ? Like, in a… dog way ?”

“What the fuck,” Kentarou answers, and he can feel his ears redden. “In a dog way ? What am I, a third rate pet ?”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Watari amends. “But you know. You growl when people get too close to him ? Even me. I thought it meant something.”

No human would do that. Should Kentarou deny ?

“Also you’re part fae.”

Well, there it is.

“Yahaba told you or nah ?” he asks, because if that snitch did he’s getting his head bopped, “Intervention” or not.

“You’re like, the least discreet person I know. You’re also on the faeling registry, so, yeah.”

Fair. Kentarou didn’t even know about the faeling registry until Minato-san talked to him about it, because his father thought the less he knew about the fae world the better it’d be. But this keeps interesting details out of his reach such as benefits that should be getting to his bank account and are, unsurprisingly, not.

Oh well. This is not his time to complain, now is about making Yahaba stop avoiding them. He walked in on Kentarou and Watari “colluding”, which led to a halfhearted attempt at a joke and week-long avoidance. This is not nice and if Watari asks one more time “Are you disappointed because you’re not a good boy anymore ?” Kentarou is going to, no joke, snap a bone.

 

 

If this plan doesn’t end soon Shigeru will surely Die. With a capital D, yeah. He’s a teenager like that and he does love his written-out-spoken-out-loud emphasis.

His mother has also been somewhat of a bother. “I don’t like this boy you’re dating. He’s not the right one for you. You should look around instead of settling with him.” Truth be told, they do have some sort of routine now with Shirabu. As evidenced by this series of text messages he shows Shinji, to prove to him that yes they’re dating and perfectly happy and everything will sail on smoothly. Which is fake, if you scroll up, there’s plans for their dramatic one on one fight in front of the pizzeria and the ensuing break-up.

[shirabae – 08:00]

get up lameass

 

[me – 08:00]

beat you to the gym

[me – 08:01]

oof too late i’m already there, suck it up loser

 

[shirabae – 08:05]

cheater

 

[me – 08:06]

smooches

 

[shirabae – 08:09]

ugh

[shirabae – 08:09]

smooches

[shirabae – 08:11]

ttyl ushijima is here

[shirabae – 08:12]

don’t say anything

 

Anyways. His mother is up to something, Shinji is up to something, god forbid, even Kyoutani in his stupid-cute dog form seems up to something. Best to avoid them all, right ? It’s all too complicated. At least Shirabu gets him. At least Shirabu doesn’t complain when he says he’s too magically exhausted to do housework, or growl at him like he’s fucking feral.

Is Kyoutani feral ? He’s been wondering about this a lot more lately, because Kyoutani has taken on to aggressive space-sharing and even, once, putting his hand on Shigeru’s shoulder in support. This is unheard of and just makes him oddly confused – it feels nice in a way he can’t explain and the very fact that there’s no explanation makes it too puzzling to bear. Shigeru craves sameness, routine and contentment, but magic makes that hard to get. That’s the lot of being the local potion dealer, he guesses, but just one day he wants to go home to a normal family and worry about his homework instead of his fake boyfriend and the lavender refills.

He’s moping, isn’t he. Shinji knocks on his head after practice, and says, “I’ve staged an Intervention. You’re going out with Kyoutani tonight, no ‘but’s. Thank me later.”

Weird flex but ok.

 

 

Kyoutani apparently knows where he lives, because he’s standing in front of Shigeru’s house by sundown. His mother lets him in with an easy smile (“Noooo”, Shigeru groans, because he warned her not to) and she affectionately pats his head. And then she says. Something interesting.

“Where’s your doggie ? Is the little girl ok ?”

“You have a dog ?” Shigeru almost screams in panicked embarrassment. “I thought _you_ were the dog !”

“Don’t be dumb,” both his mother and Kyoutani say, “only fae can turn.”

“Yeah, I knew that,” he amends, but… Still. He can’t believe he’s been talking to a dog this entire time and no one, not even Minato-san, thought to warn him.

“Anyways. Shoo, you all,” his mother says, crowding them out, and Shigeru ends up with a very feral-looking Kyoutani on the pavement in front of his apartment complex.

“What do you have in mind,” Kyoutani ends up asking – looking determinedly at the floor and not anywhere near Shigeru’s vicinity.

“ _I_ have to do the planning ?”

“Don’t complain if we go somewhere you don’t like, then,” Kyoutani gruffly answers, and he leads the way all around the building, to the little wild mountainside that lays behind it.

Shigeru notices for the first time that Kyoutani is carrying a heavy-looking bag, and that he’s been not looking at Shigeru out of a need to find a place to sit rather than out of a sense of rough shyness like he first thought. When they’re both plopped down on a tablecloth (it’s white and red, checkered, like in movies), Kyoutani stares at him unabashedly and he won’t look away.

“Stop that,” Shigeru ends up muttering. “You’re making me uncomfortable.”

“Care to explain what all this is about ?” Kyoutani says.

“That’s what I should be asking…”

“I meant your whole dumbass attitude. You hate Shirabu. You’re not a damsel in distress needing to be rescued by the local angry dog. We shouldn’t even have to be here,” Kyoutani lets out, uncharacteristically long. “You’re the one who should be doing the explaining.”

Ok, well, then, if he wants a story.

Shigeru starts where it begins, with his mother, and he spares a thought to all the blackmail material Kyoutani is going to have on him after all this, but he thinks that’s fair, with the shit he’s been pulling him through. He talks about his mother’s stupid ideas on dating and being lonely, and how he _wasn’t_ – really. How he thought he needed no one. And then Shirabu blackmailed him – that gets a growl out of Kyoutani, a promise of revenge – and how they ended up working together more than he’d ever expected.

“But you don’t love him,” Kyoutani says after a little pause. Like he’s making sure.

“I’m not sure I feel love,” Shigeru answers, and it’s freeing to say it out loud to someone who can understand. “Of course, I love my friends, and my family, and I love volleyball, but… That’s not the love they’re all talking about, right ? The love Shirabu feels for Ushijima.”

“I see.”

“Don’t just say that,” Shigeru wails. “That’s super cryptic !”

“I see,” Kyoutani says a second time, just to annoy him. Shigeru can see his little smile, hidden in the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t even know you were gay.”

“What, like that’s news,” Shigeru laughs. “I’ve had a crush on Oikawa for as long as I remember seeing him and Matsukawa hasn’t been discreet about it.”

Shigeru belatedly remembers that Kyoutani wasn’t part of the team then, and that it’s a small miracle he’s part of it now. Shigeru notices how close they are on the tablecloth, how their knees are almost touching, and he thinks, oh. This isn’t it – but it’s close.

They both breathe deeply for a little while, inhaling pollen and pollution, the smell of the night and the sight of the stars, before Kyoutani says softly, “We better go back or your mom’ll worry.”

“What about your dad,” Shigeru almost asks, before remembering what Watari told him – about Kyoutani not sleeping in a bed. He makes a silent promise to invite Kyoutani to his sleepovers from now on.

If their hands brush on the way back, Kyoutani doesn’t have anything to say about it, and it’s better this way.

**Author's Note:**

> please please comment !!! and have a good day


End file.
